Flowers have maintained a partnership with insect pollinators from the beginning. They are masters at attracting these love messengers and perpetuating the species through pollination. They use countless ways to accomplish this goal.

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Friday, May 31, 2013

One Bite out of Three before Columbus

Only recently we have opened our eyes to the importance of
pollinators in food production. The interest keeps growing almost daily. We
often hear it expressed as "we owe one bite out of three to
pollinators."

As I mentioned in the previous post, many assume
that the honey bee is responsible for all that pollination. Not so! We must
remember that the domesticated bee was brought to this continent in the 1600s by
European colonists. It was introduced to California
even later, in the 1850s. Who did all the pollination before? Was it as
necessary then as it is now?

I suspected that the "one bite out of three" was
just as valid before the introduction of the honey bee as it is now. I decided
to learn about the pollinators that did all the work in pre-Columbian days. First,
I searched for information on Native Americans' food plants and then studied
how these plants were pollinated. You can immerse yourself on Daniel Moerman's
list of 1,500 plants (Native American Ethnobotany Database) or read a shorter list of plants used by peoples of the North East. I will
limit myself to painting a picture with an extremely broad brush starting with
the most important food sources.

In large part of North America
the native peoples cultivated the so called Three
Sisters: corn, squash and beans. Corn is wind pollinated. But the other two
need the help of bees. The squash bee and a variety of solitary bees and bumble
bees pollinate the so called vine crops: pumpkins, squash and other gourds.
Beans, all varieties of them, also need the help of native bees and bumble bees
to produce a crop.

Sunflower, another staple of Native Americans, is also bee
pollinated and so are blueberries and cranberries and nearly all other berries.
Chestnuts, abundant in pre-Columbian times, were a significant part of
the diet all along Eastern North America.
Unfortunately, the American chestnut has gone almost extinct in the last
century, so we don't know much about its pollinators. But the European and the
Chinese chestnuts are pollinated by bees. We can be quite confident that it was the
same with American chestnuts.

Among all the other plants listed on the references given
above, I have picked just a few examples of those that require insect
pollination: mints, milkweeds, passion flowers, spring beauties and prickly
pears.

In South America, all the
members of the tomato and potato family are insect pollinated. Figs, cashew
nuts, cacao and a number of tropical fruits also require the services of
pollinators, not just insects but even hummingbirds and bats.

Of course, Native Americans ate animals in addition to plants. Some of this
food also depended indirectly on pollinators. I will limit myself to one
example, that iconic bird that represents one of the early interactions between
European colonists and natives: the turkey. It feeds, in part, on insect-pollinated
berries, crabapples, seeds, roots and nuts.

Pre-Columbian diets depended on
pollinators just as much as present day diets. Native pollinators
continued to do a good job when farms and orchards were small. However, in recent times, the Old World domestic bee has become the most important pollinator of
American crops because of the development of modern agricultural methods. The role of the native pollinators could be restored by creating the right conditions for them, such as
providing nesting sites and reducing pesticides, near crop fields. The Pollination Conservation Resource Center of the Xerces Society and the PollinatorPartnership among other organizations are committed to
these goals. You can find valuable resources in their respective websites.

Bugguide is by far the most useful resource, not only because of the photos and information but also for the great help if you submit images to ID request: http://bugguide.net/node/view/8267But, beware, there are a few non-native bees besides Apis mellifera. It helps to consult this article about non-native arthropods: http://bugguide.net/node/view/8267. Scroll down to the families Apidae, Andrenidae, Colletidae, Halictidae and Megachilidae.If you just want some generalities about bees, you can consult my booklet published by the USDA and downloadable as a PDF document: http://www.pollinator.org/books.htm

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About Me

We are all part of the web of life. Animals need plants and plants need animals and ultimately we all need each other in a very intricate and complex web of interactions.
A biologist from Argentina, resident of the United States for many years. Author of: "Bee Basics, An Introduction to Our Native Bees" by Beatriz Moisset, Ph.D and Stephen Buchmann, Ph.D.
All photos and content are copyrighted. Please, contact me if you want to use or purchase something.